Tufts FOOD Symposium 2007

2007-02-12T17:56:00.000-08:00

The FOOD Student group at Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy is proud to announce:

Power in the Global Food System: Mapping Food Production and Food Sovereignty in the 21^st Century

Thursday April 5, 2007
2:30 PM

Auditorium, Jaharis Center
Tufts University
150 Harrison Ave
Boston, MA

To pre-register, please contact Amelia.LoDolce@tufts.edu with your name and affiliation.There is no registration fee; a donation ($5 student, $10 non-student) will be welcomed at the door.

The second annual FOOD symposium will focus on changing power dynamics in the global food system. The dominance of an ever smaller number of agribusiness companies in the production, distribution, and marketing of food has implications that touch many disciplines: public policy, economics, law, environmental science, sociology, and health and nutrition, among others. Changes in the structure of the food system affect everyone who produces, markets, and consumes food.

Two panels of experts will address the changing nature of the food system and will outline community and public policy responses to these emerging trends. The panels, Concentration and Industrialization and International Food Sovereignty, will feature a broad range of perspectives. A keynote speaker will provide a topical bridge and will suggest ways for attendees to engage in action, research, and debate to shape the future of the global food system, with particular focus on the upcoming 2007 Farm Bill.

A reception with food and drink will follow the symposium; afterward, participants are invited to stay for a screening of the new independent film King Corn and to talk with the filmmakers.

For more information, please contact allison.quady@tufts.edu or elanor.starmer@tufts.edu.

Symposium Program:
2:30-2:45- Introduction and Welcome

2:45-4:15- Panel 1: Concentration and Industrialization in the Food System

Panelists:

Peter Carstensen: “Competition Law and Policy in Agriculture—Does it Facilitate or Control the Exploitation of Market Power?”

Peter Carstensen is the Young-Bascom Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School. He received his JD and a Master’s degree in Economics from Yale University. From 1968 to 1973, he was a trial attorney at the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice, where he worked on the application of competition policy and law to regulated industries. His scholarship and teaching have focused on antitrust law, and the relationship between antitrust law and regulation. He has consulted for both public and private parties on antitrust and competition questions, and has served as a witness at congressional hearings, including several appearances before Senate committees to discuss competition issues in agricultural markets.

Mary Hendrickson: "Why Food System Consolidation Matters to Farmers and Consumers"

Mary Hendrickson is the Director of the Food Circles Networking Project at the University of Missouri. She is one of the country’s leading analysts of concentration in food and agricultural markets. As director of the Food Circles Networking Project, she helps connect Missouri farmers with distributors and assists institutions like the University of Missouri in sourcing locally produced food. Dr. Hendrickson also serves as associate director of Community Food Systems and Sustainable Agriculture Program, where she works with mid-sized cooperatives in beef and pork processing and direct marketing. In addition to her professional endeavors, Hendrickson serves as co-chair for Healthy Farms and Communities Work Group for the 2007 Farm Bill Policy Collaboration. She also is past president of Community Food Security Coalition; vice-president of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society; and a member of the Rural Sociological Society, the Missouri Farmers Union and the Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Working Group. She has an MS and a PhD in Rural Sociology from the University of Missouri.

Guadalupe Gamboa: "Global Corporations, Global Workforce—Strategies for Protecting the Rights of U.S. Food Workers in the New World Order"

Guadalupe Gamboa is Program Officer for Workers’ Rights at Oxfam America and an immigration attorney. Prior to joining Oxfam, he served as Washington State Regional Director of the United Farm Workers of America AFL-CIO. For more than forty years, Mr. Gamboa has fought for the rights of farmworkers in Washington Sate and throughout the country. After growing up working in the fields with his family in Washington, in 1968, he became the first Chicano to be admitted to the University of Washington Law School. After leaving law school to work with the United Farm Workers, he returned to law school where he received his degree in 1980. In 1995, Mr. Gamboa was involved in the first agricultural union election in which farmworkers won a collective bargaining agreement with the largest wine grape grower in the Pacific Northwest, Chateau Ste Michelle. In September 2000, Mr. Gamboa was elected National Vice President of the United Farm Workers of America. Some of his recent work with Oxfam America has focused on organizing and advocacy with meatpacking workers.

4:30-6:0o- Panel 2: Food Sovereignty

Panelists:

Corinna Steward: "Introducting Food Sovereignty: Making the Connections for a Global Movement"

Corrina Steward is the Resource Rights Specialist for Grassroots International. She works on human rights to land, water and biodiversity; sustainable development and conservation of natural resources; and agricultural policy and trade. She recently published a paper on “From Colonization to ‘Environmental Soy’: A case study of environmental and socio-economic valuation in the Amazon soy frontier” in the Journal of Agriculture and Human Values (March 2007). She is the co-editor of "Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas" (International Institute for Environment and Development, IUCN Commission on Environmental Economic and Social Policy, and Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2006). Corrina holds a Masters degree in Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Steve Suppan: "Trade Policy Tools for Sustainable Food Sovereignty"

Steve Suppan is Senior Policy Analyst at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), where he has worked since 1994. IATP is an independent, non-profit non-governmental organization with a staff of 40 and offices in Minneapolis, MN, and Geneva, Switzerland. Much of Suppan’s work centers around explaining U.S. agriculture, trade and food safety policy to foreign governments and non-governmental organizations, especially farmer organizations. This work has taken him to 35 countries, most recently Bolivia, Senegal and Mexico. Suppan has also represented IATP at meetings of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. He was the NGO liaison to the U.S. government for the World Food Summit +5 in 2002.

Ken Meter: "Does the US Truly Feed the World? Should it Feed Itself First?"

Ken Meter, president of Crossroads Resource Center in Minneapolis, has nearly 40 years experience working in community self-determination efforts. As a journalist, Meter covered the farm credit crisis of the 1980s and international trade issues, filing first-hand reports from 11 foreign nations. He worked as an economics instructor at the Kennedy School before embarking on a series of groundbreaking studies documenting economic losses suffered in farm and food economies in the Midwest and beyond. Recently, Meter authored a media guide for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation on the national emergence of community-based food systems. An adviser to the Land Stewardship Project and the Minnesota Project, Meter also serves as evaluation consultant to a variety of organizations, including the Northwest Area Foundation's urban and rural initiatives.

Ben Burkett: "From Mississippi to Mali: The Global Farmers' Movement for Food Sovereignty"

Ben Burkett is the Director of the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives, part of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. His family has farmed in Petal, Mississippi for one hundred and twenty-one years. On what was once his family's cotton farm, Ben now grows sixteen varieties of vegetables. The Federation works in sixteen states across the southeast, with particular focus on Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina, to increase the income and enhance community development in some of the poorest parts of the south. Mr. Burkett traveled to Mali, West Africa earlier this year to participate in a global farmers' summitt on food sovereignty.

6:00-7:00- Keynote:

Marge Kilkelly: "A Bountiful Harvest of Healthy Food and Agriculture Policies – Dream or Possibility?"

The Honorable Marge Kilkelly is Director of the Northeast States Assoc. for Agricultural Stewardship (NSAAS). An affiliate of the Council of State Governments, NSAAS is an association of northeast legislators dedicated to the continuation and expansion of agriculture and the stability of rural communities in the northeast. She holds a B.S. in Human Services and a M.S. in Community Economic Development. She served 16 years in the Maine legislature before being term limited. As a former school food service director, she championed legislation to provide more fresh, local produce in schools and continues to work closely with the Maine School Food Service Directors on these issues. Ms. Kilkelly was a Brooks Fellow with the Kennedy School State and Local Leadership program, an Eisenhower Fellow studying rural economic development in Central Europe, and a Flemming Fellow at the Center for Policy Alternatives. She currently serves as a partner on the Kellogg funded Northeast Ag Works! agriculture policy grant. Kilkelly and her husband Joe Murray are owners of Dragonfly Cove Farm, where they and raise and market meat goats.

7:00-8:00- Reception
7:30-9:00- Screening of the new independent film "King Corn"

Directions: The Friedman School is located near the Downtown Crossing T station on the red and orange lines, or the New England Medical Center stop on the orange line. For walking directions from the T or for driving directions, please see http://www.tufts.edu/home/maps/?p=boston. The Friedman School is located in the Jaharis Building on Harrison Ave.

Sponsors: FOOD, Gerald R. and Dorothy J. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts Institute for the Environment, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy Environmental Sustainability Initiative and Slow Food. Food generously donated by Whole Foods. Organic coffee generously donated by Equal Exchange.

Tufts Food Symposium

Tufts FOOD Symposium 2007

Power in the Global Food System: Mapping Food Production and Food Sovereignty in the 21st Century

Power in the Global Food System: Mapping Food Production and Food Sovereignty in the 21^st Century